Recent studies hold that populist radical right parties have shifted towards a leftist socio-economic position in response to growing working-class support.Based on an analysis of policy choices in government, the present article examines this 'pro-welfare view' through a case study analysis of the Freedom Party of Austria (FP € O). Yet, despite the 'proletarisation' of its electoral support base, the FP € O's pro-welfare impact is restricted to the mitigation of welfare retrenchment for the core workforce, whereas the party has been a protagonist of tax cuts, trade union disempowerment and, more recently, welfare chauvinism. This policy impact can be attributed to a producerist ideology arguing that tax-paying 'makers' (employees, employers) need to be liberated from the economic burden imposed by self-serving 'takers' (immigrants, 'corrupt elite'). The article concludes with conceptual and theoretical implications for the political economy of the populist radical right. KEYWORDS Radical right parties; populism; economic policies; social policies; corporatism A growing amount of literature suggests that populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have become the new 'working-class parties' in the advanced capitalist democracies (Afonso and Rennwald 2018; Arzheimer 2013; Kitschelt 2007). As blue-collar and lower-skilled service workers defected from the political left, they increasingly opted for abstention or the radical right. The prevailing narrative is that PRRPs responded to this electoral realignment with a protectionist economic programme against unfettered markets (e.g. Eger and Valdez 2015; Hopkin 2017). PRRPs, so the logic goes, have taken advantage of the centre-left's abandonment of its traditional constituency by leaving behind their neoliberal legacies and taking up the demands of working-class voters for social protection (
His work falls in the area of comparative political economy, with a particular focus on welfare states, labour relations, party politics, and social inequality. His book "Strong Governments, Precarious Workers" was published with Cornell University Press and he has written articles for Socio-Economic Review, West European Politics, and Comparative European Politics, amongst others.
This review article and special issue introduction argues that studying the relationship between the populist radical right and the welfare state requires bridging literatures that have so far advanced with little mutual engagement: party politics and voting behaviour research on the one hand, and comparative political economy and welfare state research on the other. In this way, the article highlights the advantages of connecting different academic sub-fields in studying radical right politics. First, the literature of comparative political economy on the multi-dimensionality of welfare politics can contribute to a clearer understanding of both the welfare-related causes and consequences of radical right support. Second, the party politics literature on the radical right's ideology provides theoretical tools to explain the welfare-related consequences of populist radical right parties. The article illustrates the advantages of bridging these literatures through the empirical contributions in this special issue and concludes with avenues of future research.
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